Waking to bright blue and dazzling bright, a sunshine start to summer solstice weekend.

The garden is lush green, trees fully leafed, weeds and flowers growing with equal vigor.

Apart from enjoying the frocundity all around, my mind and efforts are focused on  preparations for Barga.  Painting materials, sketching, drawing, planning, what can I bear to leave behind. The studio at Quattro Archi is so well equipped, but I stroke my brushes, my shortened pencils, paint stained mixing plates, sketchbooks new and old… they are all coming with me.  they carry the memory of paintings past and the anticipation of painting future. 

My workshops planned and tied with loose ribbons as starting points for painters to escape from.  Structure to allow for creative work and play.  Like water colour painting itself, a balance of control and chaos, tension and freedom. Water and colour, wet and dry. 

Barga is a wonderful varied town, ancient and modern combined, hand hewn cobbles and poured concrete, tough hills, steep valleys and soft olive groves.  Narrow dark lanes and distance uplifting vista.

It looks like my title should be  ‘Delight in Contrast’

Every time I demonstrate the mixing of strong complimentary pairs to create a neutral, it is as thrilling as ever. The moment the mix transforms from red, or green to neutral is magic.  With plenty of water the grey colours dry, with the tiny flecks of the red and green pigments just visible close up, showing what went in to create the neutral colour.

I can convince myself the same magic in reverse as this grey winter seperates out, and colourful spring emerges. The dots of yellow acenites, pop up with purple crocus.  Sienna buds of chestnut, blue skies (we have not seen much of the like for sometime) .  Tiny red dropplets appear  on the larch branches,  near by the ever green spruce.  Colours brightening, and strenghening as the daylight lenghthens. 

And thaughts of springtime become reality.

Plenty of time,..  it is an inevitable sequence that seems to gather momentum as each year passes.

And June will come, with its bright long days. 

At the end of June I am looking forward to being in Barga,  tutoring,  Water Colour Heaven.  A week of watercolour sketching and painting in sunshines bright light, terracottas, vibrant blues, pinks, yellows, purples, greens.  All to mix and wash and glaze and brush and detail.

Quattro Archi de Barga 25th June 2026

Water Colour Heaven – Hosted by Jane and Michael Richardson – with me to guide and encourage you.  A week of painting tuition and holiday in Italy.

Snow is like fish and friends, after five days its gone off… three weeks is a real drag. Putting on walking boots with grips just to get across the yard to my studio.

But I have a short course to be delivered in the orangery at West Dean to look forward to. To celebrate this, a complete refresh of my course plan.  It lifts my spirits to re-evaluate the material for new students.

Course dates 29th Jan  – 1st Februay. There are spaces.

We will cover delightful watercolour techniques and their application using the themes of landscape elements, and sourse material from the West Dean gardens.

Some of my most pivotal creative adventures have been in Italy.

In 1979 I was in Florence with a group from West Surrey College of Art. Led by tutor Malcolm Miles who soon vaporised into his own dimention, leaving us students to discover the wonders of italian artistic genious,  from religious medieval to renaisance and beyond, by ourselves.

Which we did, we walked, shared and viewed.

Literally stumbling over creative wonders from the past on every street corner

There was a Chagal painting on an easel near the exit of the Uffitsi which one of our party decreed, “the only piece worth seeing in the whole gallery”.

I had a secret weapon. My father, Graham Hunt,  vet by profession but lover of all the arts. He was engaged with doing his arts foundation course with the open univercity which meant he qualified to join the trip . His knowlege matched his energy, he contributed both to any one who joined us on the two week tour of Florentine art in 6 days.

My best memories include climbing up the stone stairway and clambering round the Duomo dome and then standing with him at the view point on high, Florence from Duomo.

Standing in front of Botticellis Venus for longer than I had ever been engaged in a painting before. Tears welling in a most genuine show of emotional engagement. The work so layered in art history it couldnt fail to be effective, and being with my father,  it was all done with so much mutual joy.

And picnics.

So. Italy revisited. Over and over. Since then.

Now Barga first in 2024 – planning 2026.

Here are some sketches created from stone carvings,  from inside the catherdral – frottage. By rubbing graphite over thin paper which iscplaced over the carvings. They are now reimagined using a mixed media technique that i learnt in a graphics module at Canterbury College of Art.

Water Colour week at Quattro Archi Di Barga 26th June – 2nd july. A week of heavenly time in Barga, Italy.

Watercolour techniques and application in a delightful studio and medieval town setting.

Not only was the watercolour class on 2nd – 4th November fully subscibed, but all the attendees were keen to learn and fun to work with. 

Its a most rewarding and enjoyable experience to be at West Dean, sharing my love of watercolour with such a receptive and colourful bunch of people.

I will be back for a few days at the end of January ‘Improvers Watercolour’  and then my next adventure is in Italy.  Returning to Barga on 25th June to meet some more aspiring water colour painters.  A creative time with sunshine, fabulous scenery, good company and of course food and wine.

Tutoring Watercolour: a beginners guide.

It is my favourite course where I can share some of the myriad possibilities when mixing paint with water.

Wet in wet, chaotic mixing and dry brush control.  As in the illustration below. (Dry brush detail)

If I can give students confidence to experiment and create the effects that please them.  Making visual diaries, or paintings.  

I like to use watercolour as a form of diary.  I did this painting last autumn the bare willow tree and healthy looking privet bushes.

Now the tree is blown down, and the privet balls are consumed with moth.  But the bluetits are feasting on the caterpillars, so some good comes from the blight.  The detail is relevant for my purpose.

This piece is more playful, light, and shade – the warmer ambience of a French orchard.

The Barn have invited me to create a workshop  weekend. Titled, A Weekend Of  Watercolour.  We will be working through the wonders of watercolour; method, technigues, colour mixing, playfully experimenting and seeing the myriad of effects we can achieve. We will push the boundaries with watery chaos or more controlled brush work.

And then… We will edit, collage, tear, cut and create thematic booklets.   Two days at the beginning of May 2025 ( 3rd/4th)  – come and join the workshop at this most inspiring venue. (The coffees good too). 

I will provide different papers and materials, but hope you will bring past work and your skills to share and develop.

Go to Barn Arts website for booking details.

I sketch to understand, and I paint to resolve.

I am preparing a new workshop, having tested elements of it with art groups and creative friends.

The idea stems from a personal belief and the need to practice rather than present. By this I mean, that I am working to refresh and revitalise my sketching habit – being more concerned with topping up my painting language and skills, looking for new motif, rather than trying to produce more finished paintings.

Sketch books are personal, a place where we can play and  practice. This is different from what is being encouraged as ‘Artists Books’ which seem contrived to impress. (Planning a finished book with the intention of displaying.) Sketch books are more akin to exersize books, a notebook, scrapbook, or diary.

I am working thematically,  maybe watercolour techniques, or colour harmonies, or birds or whatever…

Following a trail and seeing where it leads. Or if it’s a dead end.

Keeping an open mind to allow connections to evolve.  Then maybe: if different pieces fit together and a spark of confidence  is enough, to inspire the creation of a more resolved piece of work.

This is what is written around the outside edge of the BEM medal I was presented with yesterday.  For services to arts and crafts.

In my own home, with many of my fellow creative, collaborative buddies, friends all.

It was an utterly delightful day.

Tickled pink doesn’t come close to describing my pride and joy at it all.  Be it humbug or brew ha ha I care not. I am chuffed to bits.

The sun shone, adding bright blue sky to backdrop the posing.

Thank you all who have artfully meddled with me, who helped to initiate NEOS all those years ago, who hussled and stayed true to AAS when it seemed to be doomed.  Volunteers and advocates, visionary and ambitious.

And my family who have filled my life with wonders.

And to those who thaught me worthy of recognition.  Who…

And of course key chums who also share the baking, the banter, the breaking of bread, drinking coffee and wine, the boules, and other bollocks. Thankyou.

And the flowers. There were lots and they are all appreciated.

We saw the new year in with a covering of snow – snow on snow like the Christmas Carol. And it has stayed for longer than any of the last ten years.

So last week my concern was the drive south to fulfil my short course delivery at West Dean.  The A66 was closed (my preferred route across from West to East) and snow kept falling in the shire.

But here I am safe and sound, 600 miles drive with steady moving traffic and no significant weather. I took the precaution of filling my windscreen wash though and  it is now near empty. the gritted roads and snow melt covered cars with a fine grime and pertinantly, the windscreen.  Many folk were driving with grubby obscured number plates.

I’m hoping the comforting fire will be lit at West Dean and that the heating is on full blast in the Orangery.  It is just as cold in East Sussex as it was in Aberdeenshire.

Painting snow is a lovely conundrum, what seems so obvious (no colour?) can  be anything but… Monet manages it with such joyous complimentary combinations.

Maybe we can add the possibility of rendering illusion of snow to our list of watercolour methods and effects.